George Fraser - The Pyrates

His double opportunity came on a balmy tropic night as they sailed smoothly down towards the Cape over a limpid azure sea beneath a moon so golden that it almost dripped in the purple sky. Stars twinkled, scented breezes blew, in the great cabin the Admiral and Yardley, stuffed to surfeit and drowsy with port, hiccoughed and reminisced, and in the seclusion of the stern gallery Captain Avery and Lady Vanity clung in an ecstatic embrace, munching each other’s lips and only occasionally coming up for air.

(Avery? Necking? Has our idol got feet of smouldering clay? By no means. Left to himself, he would have worshipped his blonde divinity from afar, or rather from close quarters, but never laying a glove on her; he didn’t have all his Scout badges for nothing. His love was chaste and holy, and he had never so much as held hands at the church social. But Vanity soon took care of that. Delicately nurtured at a finishing school where panty-raids by ardent young males were commonplace, and where she and her schoolmates had been wont to classify Society bucks as N.S.A.V., N.S.I.S.C., and N.S.A. *respectively, she had quickly realised that this dream-man was such a spiritual Galahad that he would need tuition in how to get physical. Her course of instruction took about eleven seconds, consisting of a glance at the moon, a gentle sigh, a hand on his arm, her eyes wide and uplifted to his, a parting of her moist lips, and before the hypnotised Avery knew what he was doing he was glued to her like the Magdeburg hemispheres, finally parting after three solid minutes of osculation with the sound of a drain unblocking. After that first memorable kiss, which he quickly convinced himself was not only a perfectly seemly, but courteous thing to do – for this adorable girl deserved every treat she could get – it was plain sailing; Vanity could relax contentedly and let him make the running – all good clean fun, mind you, for she was a proper and toward young lady who permitted no undue familiarities, which she guessed Avery wouldn’t know how to make, anyway.)

So they smooched away blissfully and decorously, as lovers will, until Vanity decided that she had now got this superman softened up sufficiently to start moulding him to her imperious will – a necessary preliminary to the marriage which she had determined would follow eventually, when she felt like it. From this point the lovers were observed by Colonel Blood, out for a twilight prowl, and cheerfully eavesdropping from the stern rail above their heads, the swine. This is what he heard:

VANITY (panting): Easy, boy, easy! Golly, you don’t know your own strength! Is my hair a mess?

AVERY: Nay, sweet goddess, ’tis immaculate as thy perfect self. (With an indulgent male chauvinist smile.) I fear me y’are well named Lady Vanity.

VANITY (checking make-up in mirror): Too right. I’m gorgeous, proud, and insufferably spoiled. Very properly. Now, what’s all this rot about getting off at Madagascar, and leaving me to be bored witless all the way to Calicut?

AVERY (sighing): Alas, dearest, I have my duty.

VANITY: Indeed? I can see we shall have to get your priorities straight. One, duty is what other people do. Two, if ever you find yourself faced with a choice between duty and me, I shall whistle – once. Three, if you’re to be Sir Benjamin before your twenty-fifth birthday, and we’re to be Earl and Countess before you’re thirty – for I won’t settle for less, and flag rank for you into the bargain –

AVERY: Angel, I shall win these trifles and lay them at your feet!

VANITY: Trifles, quotha! You win whatever you like, Tyrone, and I’ll manage the essentials. For know that I am an Admiral’s daughter, a Very Important Lady with immense influence – the King has spoken politely to me –

AVERY (frowning): Has he, though?

VANITY: – and before I’m through you’re going to have a seat in the Cabinet. Don’t fret, I can keep Charlie at a distance, and arrange your preferment, advancement, and finances perfectly satisfactorily. Ah, ’twill be very bliss, you and I together, our future golden –

AVERY (friendly but firm): I still have to get off at Madagascar.

VANITY: Forget it – I shall speak to Father –

AVERY: Dear heart, even he is powerless. ’Tis royal command.

VANITY: Straight up? Oh, blast! Then let us make the most of what little time is left to us for the moment. Hold me, my darling … renew our fleeting rapture …

AVERY (ardently): Yum-yum!

VANITY (slightly muffled): Mind my beauty patch …

By this time Blood had given up in disgust, not untinged with envy, and judging that Avery would be occupied for some time, descended stealthily to the young captain’s cabin and began operations on the oak box with great patience and a bent nail. (No end to the fellow’s criminal versatility.) Presently he had the lid up and was squatting reverently muttering “Bejazus!” as he contemplated the gleaming glory of the crown. So this was the precious secret – and it was going to Madagascar! Fat chance. For about five seconds he gloated greedily, and then, being a highly practical scoundrel, relocked the box and went on deck, where he lurked chin in hand – and he wasn’t considering his next contribution to Dr Barnardo’s, either. How to acquire this wondrous bauble – it must be thought upon. In the meantime, with the crew all asleep and the Quality either swilling port or snogging, it occurred to the Colonel that he knew an excellent way of celebrating his splendid discovery. Watching all that boy-and-girl stuff on the stern gallery had reawakened the beast in him, rakehell that he was …

Captain Avery, having bidden the delectable Vanity good-night with a last fond grapple at her cabin door, had thereafter repaired rather unsteadily to his quarters for a cold bath. He had been hopelessly in love for several weeks now, but actually petting with beautiful blondes was something else – so that was what Ovid and Count Orsino and the poet Herrick got all worked up about, he reflected breathlessly. Well, he could see what they meant. Wow! And she loved him, and melted in his arms, and her kisses were like perfumed darts from Cupid’s bow … but enough was enough – well, no, it wasn’t, but in the meantime he was Captain Benjamin Avery, after all, with responsibilities and duties and things, and it was time to climb off Cloud Nine for the moment. He would take a brisk walk round the deck before retiring, and this slightly dizzy feeling would go away.

So he dressed rapidly, and going quietly on deck, was just in time to see a stealthy figure descending the main hatchway. It looked like that awful scoundrel Blood … in a moment the lover was transformed into the cool, alert man of action as the captain, narrow-eyed and treading softly, followed to see what mischief the fellow might be up to when all decent folk were in their pits for the night.

It did not occur to the Captain that there was anything demeaning about snooping after his fellow-passenger in this fashion. After all, Blood was widely known to be as bent as a boat-hook and, as head prefect at Uppingham Avery had been accustomed to trailing nocturnal bounds-breakers and confiscating their illicit cherry brandy and copies of Playeboye. So now, his magnificent shapely ears pricked, he crept down the companion after the softly sneaking Colonel; past the focsle where the crew snored and the atmosphere was thick enough to sell as coal briquettes, past the main cargo deck, into the hold, and then through dark narrow ways among the piled-up gear, where rats squeaked and scuttled, and only the occasional horn lantern guttered i’ the gloom. Once the Captain paused, when his foot got jammed in a bucket, and then he was hurrying ahead towards a distant gleam of light, whence came the sound of voices, one tense with fury, the other soft and sinisterly mocking …